


Goodnight Moon

by ValidEmail (orphan_account)



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gay, HIV/AIDS, Multi, Sad, tw//graphic descriptions of the physical symptoms of aids??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ValidEmail
Summary: "There is a spot, a purple one, on the side of his calf. He’s been so covered up lately due to the growing winter weather that Marvin had never noticed it before, but looking at it now, there are three spots in total. They are close together, and none of the three appear to be the pimples like the ones on his face, or the freckles that dot his nose and arms. Eerily, he’s  reminded of the same type of spots that are now spreading across both Whizzer’s face and legs. Marvin recollects Whizzer’s now-strange refusal to talk to him after a visit to the doctor’s office.There is no chance to read into them more, however, because the coffee dings, and he drifts away from the mirror to pour out two cups."Marvin's outlook on the sickness that is befalling Whizzer.





	Goodnight Moon

**Author's Note:**

> i'm reading and the band played on . was inspired by it to write a blurb about marvin's view on his sickness .

Anger was his first mechanism in situations he was not familiar with. Such as, when Trina revealed that she was pregnant, or not gaining attention on his fourteenth birthday. The patterns of his aggressive and needy behavior were spread throughout the history of his life on earth, it was as clear as the pimples spreading across his nose, the bags underneath his eyes, the hurt splayed on Whizzer’s face after he had thrown the suitcase at his feet in a fit of rage. Marvin was used to getting what he wanted. He had ordered the population to their knees, and so they did. If he had told them jump, they would have responded “How high?” and if he had requested something, he would have been given it on a golden platter. His world was a mosaic of stain-glass windows and perfect family photographs. Fourteen-year-old Marvin would not have expected to have that perfect scene one day axed down by a pretty boy with a stupid name wearing too-tight pants and carrying a stick of realization, but thirty-seven year old Marvin, wearing a baggy sweatshirt in order to hide his dad body while sat unwillingly on the stands of his son’s baseball game, his ex-boyfriend leaning up onto his chest, couldn’t bring himself to care.

 

He was drunk on his wedding day. He wouldn’t have admitted then, but he admits it now, breathily into Whizzer’s chest hair as they curl together on a lazy Sunday morning. He’s still exhausted, both from the past week and from temple, but Whizzer doesn’t voice complaints about just staying in for a while. His long, elegant fingers are tangled up in Marvin’s unruly curls, pulling at them lightly as the two drift in and out of consciousness. Everything about this man in elegant. Marvin remembers the time in which he’d stare blankly at the other man’s resting face, not a trace of love in his heart for the innocence of his sleeping partner, much more attracted to the expression Whizzer would put on in the throes of either fighting or sex. Love made everything more difficult. If he had done the same, admitted to Whizzer had he couldn’t even remember his vows or the type of flowers they had at the reception because of how much alcohol he had inhaled, two years before, Whizzer would have laughed in his face. Now, though, his lover simply continues to run his fingers through the shorter’s curls, and pulls him tighter to his rather bony chest, nudging his nose to the tip of Marvin’s bangs.  


He gets up at about eleven, finally rolling from the tangled up sheets, much to Whizzer’s chagrin. He keeps a hold on Marvin’s arm firmly, whining for him to come back to bed, the sheer vulnerability Whizzer is comfortable showing shocking Marvin enough to lead him to stand in the doorway of their bedroom for another ten minutes, just drinking in his lover. Trudging out, finally, Marvin blinks at the sunlight streaming through their windows, the sounds of New York City flooding muffedly through the thick glass. He starts the coffee maker, and moves over to the mirror hanging by the side of their kitchen. It had been placed there so that Whizzer can make last-minute changes to his appearance before heading out of their apartment. Now, though, it’s clear that Marvin is no Whizzer. His curls stick up into the depths of space, dark brown hairs barely reaching the tip of his neck, though it still appears like an overused mop on his head. The bags underneath his eyes are growing with each passing day, the shadows practically reaching his chin. His stomach folds out past the waistband of his sleep shorts, ones he had grabbed from the floor and slid on in the darkness of the night. His arms are buffer than his stomach, and his legs, so he chooses to admire them for a second in the mirror. There is a spot, a purple one, on the side of his calf. He’s been so covered up lately due to the growing winter weather that Marvin had never noticed it before, but looking at it now, there are three spots in total. They are close together, and none of the three appear to be the pimples like the ones on his face, or the freckles that dot his nose and arms. Eerily, he’s  reminded of the same type of spots that are now spreading across both Whizzer’s face and legs. Marvin recollects Whizzer’s now-strange refusal to talk to him after a visit to the doctor’s office.There is no chance to read into them more, however, because the coffee dings, and he drifts away from the mirror to pour out two cups. One sugar for him, three for Whizzer. He’s got to get his energy from somewhere.

 

The tension that had been growing between he and his ex-wife for months now over Jason’s bar mitzvah dissipated the moment Marvin made a frantic midnight call from the hospital lobby phone to the Wisenbachfeld apartment, barely getting the news out that Whizzer had some sort of strange disease through the onslaught of tears. Trina now spent most of her time either speaking to Whizzer in hushed whispers, as though they had never been at each other’s throats, a man’s wife and a man’s secret lover. The sickness had erased every grudge Trina held against the fragile man, every bad memory of what he had done in the past. They were just family, now, and Trina would make sure to confirm that by slipping into the hospital at least three times a week to speak to Whizzer until he fell asleep.

 

There are certain rules Marvin must not be aware of. Should he have drank less? Cursed God less? Gone to temple more? He hadn’t understood what the wrongs either he or Whizzer had done to deserve such an awful illness to fall onto him. Whizzer’s skin was coated in Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions, purple and disgusting, his frail body clinging desperately to the hospital gown around his frame. It had not just affected him, though. The purple spots that were once frigid on Marvin’s calf had now spread down to the tip of his leg, causing it to swell up painfully whenever he attempted to play racquetball. After a session left him out of breath and aching, he took to instead make a sport out of grabbing ice chips for Whizzer whenever he needed them from the hospital cafeteria.

 

In the summer, he took Whizzer out to the little garden they had in the hospital for fresh air. He could move around some still, though he had to cling to his family members. He watched as Whizzer smiled at the butterflies fluttering on the beautiful flowers, the sun that was hanging high in the sky. He curled up beside Marvin, and held him while they watched the sunset together. Marvin wet his hair with tears he could not control, and Whizzer then allowed himself to be walked back into his hospital room, but not before standing by himself in the center of the garden.

 

“Goodbye, sun,” He whispered, childlike and innocent, as they watched it disappear behind the horizon. “Goodbye, flowers. Goodbye, butterflies. Goodbye. Goodbye!” His skin crinkled around his eyes as his grin spread despite the tears now filling his eyes, the moon beginning its journey to hang in the sky, same as its sunny counterpart had for most of the day.

 

“Why are you saying goodbye, Whiz?” Marvin whispered, brushing away a few of his lover’s tears with one callused finger, watching him, heartbroken. Whizzer leaned into his chest, and somehow appeared shorter, due to the fact that the sickness had shrunken him, that he could no longer keep up the perfect posture he had held before this disease had taken over. Whizzer swallowed roughly, and entangled a hand with the red of Marvin’s sweatshirt.

 

“Because, Marv,” Whizzer replied in a hoarse whisper, the strain on his voice from speaking for a while clear. “I’m afraid that I won’t ever see them again. So I’m saying goodbye now, in case I...” He trailed off. There was a moment of silence.

 

“But you’ll take photos of them for me when I’m cooped up in that bed again, won’t you?” Whizzer smiled softly against his lover’s soft body, the fabric of his sweatshirt coating his face as he leaned in. Marvin choked back the sudden urge to sob, and instead wrapped his arms more tightly around Whizzer, attempting not to notice the bony frame of the other man. He began to sway them, lit up underneath the moonlight and the view of a thousand stars. Whizzer fell asleep in a matter of minutes, thankfully, and Marvin delivered him back to his hospital room, but not before whispering a promise of taking him out the next day once more from his lips onto Whizzer’s chilled forehead. They never managed to make it back out into the garden, though. Not even Marvin, as Whizzer had forgotten about the tired wish for photographs, and Marvin was sure if he entered the garden, he would not be able to get out without breaking down.

 

Marvin felt trapped on the sidelines of this. It was 1982, god damnit, and he understood from the hushes of the underground gay community that it wasn’t just his boyfriend who had this unidentified, quick-spreading disease. There had been a few protesters outside the bathhouse on 56th and 8th street the last time he passed it going to the nearby market for a bag of peanuts. They were Whizzer’s favorite, although now he’d only get to about four or five before either throwing it back up or stopping himself from eating anymore. His lesions were not on his face just yet, meaning queer men would hit on him everytime he went out to a bar just to soak up the scene of where he had met Whizzer, to have maybe a drink or two and then stumble back home to the pleads of Cordelia. He only ever really went if the nurses kicked him out after visiting hours were over. He suspected some of the men sizing him up also had hidden lesions, underneath their suit jackets or their skinny jeans, though it would be difficult to find them in the darkness of the New York City night. He stopped going to bars after he overheard a conversation between two gay men about how ludacris the attempt at forcing the gays to have safe sex was. It was difficult to get back into the bar after that, since he had then spun around on his barstool, and slugged one of the men square in the jaw.

 

“Marvin, do you remember when you found that huge taped up box in the hallway closet, and I yelled at you for an hour straight because I hadn’t wanted you to find it?” Whizzer startled him one day, voice hoarse and tired, clinging to life roughly as he attempted to push his head above the figurative water. Their hands were loosely connected, Marvin lying beside Whizzer, cradling him carefully as to not hurt him. After the months Whizzer had spent wasting away in the hospital, he was still shocked by how bony Whizzer’s body was. “Find it, and bring it to the hospital, okay? I wanna see...I wanna see your reaction.” He took a deep breath, then, and struggled to release it. Marvin stayed with him until he was finally thrown from the hospital room and into the streets. Only then did he stumble back to his apartment to look for the box.

 

He carried it under his arm back to the hospital the next day, and wheeled in one of the nearby tables to crack it open beside Whizzer’s bed. When he opened the cardboard, he gasped despite himself, and Whizzer grinned, even if it was obviously extremely painful. They looked at them one by one, pictures of Jason focusing on chess, Trina cooking, Mendel talking animatedly about something or another, Marvin just smiling dopily at the photographer himself. By the end, Marvin had to set the box on the floor, as to not sob and get water all over the precious polaroids. The next day, he gave the box to Jason to keep a hold of. He wanted someone to protect them from when he’d eventually reach crazy in the process of getting over Whizzer, when he’d attempt to burn every picture of Whizzer he owned, or throw plates at the wall. Whizzer’s shaking hand clenched onto his, still, and Marvin let him, letting the other hold him back from doing destructive things. At least, while he was still able to.

 

When Whizzer began to sleep more and speak coherently less, Marvin took any chances to get fresh air, out of the hospital, out of the overwhelming sadness he felt whenever his line of vision landed on Whizzer in that damned hospital bed. He headed off with Trina to his high school reunion, instead, the tenth year. Had the sickness not taken over Whizzer like it had with so many other gay men, he would have taken his lover in order to shock the crowd of his prior peers. Whizzer possessed that certain ability to gain the attention of everyone in a room. Instead, he hung to the back of the old gym, where the fans were running on high, and let Trina gush about Mendel. His high school sweetheart approached him at one point, about six months pregnant, a ring shining on her left hand.

 

“I’m sorry you had to take your ex-wife to your high school reunion,” Josie, his old girlfriend, the one he broke up with after she ruined his favorite couch, started the conversation with him almost right before the reunion came to a close. Anger as a first response. He shook his head at his dumb high school self, the same one that had gotten Trina pregnant. “Though, it’s not that hard to believe that you couldn’t get another steady girlfriend. No offense, but it’s not easy to stand you.” Marvin noticed the red ribbon tied around Josie’s wrist, and took a leap.

 

“My boyfriend’s in the hospital. With that gay pneumonia,” Marvin told her stonily. “That’s why I’m bringing Trina. Because he’s dying.” Josie paused, and then let out a sigh, filled with both sympathy and understanding. Rubbing his shoulder, she let him hug her tightly, years of pent-up aggression towards one another falling away. When Marvin came back to Whizzer the day after, happy his lover was feeling well enough to sit up in bed and not just speak in quotes from random movies, Whizzer had chuckled at the story.

 

“At least you won’t be holding any grudges when you die,” Whizzer joked, and squeezed Marvin’s hand. “I wish I could do the same.” Marvin had laughed with him, until Whizzer had fallen asleep, and then the giggling died down. Whizzer was going to die with a fierce grudge against his parents. Suddenly, the joke did not seem as funny anymore.

 

Whizzer hadn’t wanted to die in the hospital. So when Charlotte announced with a sad tone that he didn’t have much longer, Marvin and Mendel assisted Whizzer into the pulled up car, borrowed from Trina’s parents, and drove him back to his and Marvin’s shared apartment. There, Whizzer was set up in the master bedroom, Jason was ecstatic because finally he and Whizzer could play chess using the glass set Marvin had gotten Jason for his twelfth birthday, instead of just using the crappy hospital one. Marvin made sure to place a few flowers in a vase to rest on the bedside table so that Whizzer could still smell sweet things, even if it was difficult for him to keep food down, or his eyes open long enough to hold a conversation. The Kaposi’s Sarcoma sores had practically taken over his skin, and his diarrhea was out of control - but Marvin loved him unconditionally all the same.

 

When his lover finally let go, it was in the middle of the night, after the excitement of Jason’s bar mitzvah passed. Jason had held it in the bedroom, Marvin putting Whizzer in a tie for the occasion. His boyfriend had joked faintly about fashion, and for a split second, the tension within the small room heightened, and then the family laughed, breaking down the walls they had previously set up. When all was said and done, though, Marvin changed Whizzer into his pajamas, kissed his forehead lovingly, making sure to avoid the KS lesions, and settled into bed beside him, the moonlight fluttering through the curtains of the New York City apartment.

 

“Goodbye, moon,” Whizzer whispered, almost trance-like. Marvin cracked open one eye, and glanced at his watch. It was four in the morning, and somehow, his lover was awake. “I had believed that I would never see you again.” Marvin moved to sit up in bed, to watch Whizzer’s face. It was lit up in the moonlight, beautiful and pale, his tan skin having disappeared altogether. His scars were drenched in moonlight, as were his large, brown eyes, glowing despite the tears racing down his cheeks, the pain clear in his relaxed face.

 

“Whiz?” Marvin murmured, and his lover tilted his head towards him, the moon still shining down on his face, his eyes filled to the brim with love for the man beside him. “Whiz, what are you talking about?”

 

“I’m saying goodbye to the moon,” Whizzer told him quietly, a blissful look coming over his face. “I’m saying goodbye to everyone else, too.” Marvin let out a sharp exhale of breath in shock, and leaned towards Whizzer, reaching up a hand to touch his face.

 

“Whizzer, please,” Marvin murmured, Whizzer rubbing his cheek against Marvin’s hand as though he were a cat. He tilted his head back to the moon, to the night sky, to the constellations and everything else up there in the vast universe. “Please, don’t go. Not now. I’m not ready.”

 

“They can all see the moon,” Whizzer continued, almost as though he had not heard Marvin pleading with him. “And when they see it, they see me too. Don’t you, Marv? Don’t you see me?” He reached up a quivering finger to point uselessly to the moon, before dropping his hand. Marvin eyed the moon, and for a moment, could almost see Whizzer in the moon’s craters, his beautiful face shining with affection, his hair perfect, void of scars or pain.

 

“I want to see you here, though, baby,” Marvin choked out, and grabbed tightly onto the hand closest to his. “I don’t want to see you in the moon. Stay here, Whiz. Let me see you now.” Whizzer smiled, not taking his gaze from the moon.

 

“You can see me now,” Whizzer murmured, his lips barely moving. “But you’ll have to suffice to seeing me in the moon after now, okay?” There was silence between the two men, Marvin crying, tears streaming down his face, Whizzer staring up at the moon, their hands connected between them.

 

“Tell Jason that I love him,” Whizzer ordered faintly. “And Cordelia that I actually liked her cooking. And tell Charlotte that this wasn’t her fault.” Marvin huffed out a breath at the Cordelia comment, in an attempt at a laugh. Whizzer finally tilted his head towards him, his breathing slowing noticeably. The puffs of air came out at a sluggish pace.

 

“Treat Trina better. Actually try to like Mendel, alright?” Whizzer sucked in a breath, and for a moment, his peaceful facade fell away. God, he was scared too. He was so scared. “And...And I love you, okay Marv? Promise me you’ll take good care of yourself when I’m gone. Learn to cook for your goddamn self.” He smiled at his own joke, not bothering to laugh, and shut his eyes. Marvin removed his hand from Whizzer’s to feel his heartbeat against his scrawny chest, and when there was no pulse against his hand, he dropped it to the mattress. Removing himself from the bed, he called the hospital with no emotion in his voice, the tears drying on his face. They’d be there in the next hour or so to pick up Whizzer to do final checks and prepare him. Stood in the centre of his once-shared bedroom with Whizzer, Marvin eyed Whizzer, and finally, felt a sense of comfort drift over him. There was no anger in his heart, not yet, at least. It was not his reaction to this tragedy, though it might have been before. Drifting over to their large, wall-sized windows, he pushed back the curtains, and turned his gaze up to the moon. There was flicker of the stars around it, and Marvin let himself cry silent tears. For now, he’d keep the moon in sight, and see Whizzer’s wonderful, loving, no longer there face in its layered landscape.

 

**FIN**


End file.
